Thursday, July 26, 2007

This is Medieval group Cultus Ferox performing Gotterdammerung. As is usually the case the best Medieval groups are German.

The truth is that with one exception (the song Palestinalied), we don't really know what Medieval music sounded like. However extrapolating from Palestinalied and using authentic Medieval musical instruments and going by historical records which tell us that when a particularly good bunch of minstrels would start playing in a town or village that the young folk would sometimes dance themselves into such a frenzy that soldiers would have to be sent in to restore order.

Another thing we know about that era is that there was a game which the young folk enjoyed playing in which the young men would fall to the ground while dancing and roll about in such a was as to trip a young woman. The woman would contrive to fall in such a way as to cause her skirt to fly above her waist. Since underwear had not been invented this would tend to put her "private areas" on display for the assembled crowd.

A monk of the era wrote disapprovingly that it seemed that one could do a young woman of the day no greater favor than to reveal to the world her most secret anatomy. I was reminded of this today as I walked through a local supermarket and saw a young female employee bending down to place goods on a bottom shelf with pants gaping open to expose about 3/4 of her backside. It seems the more things change the more they stay the same.